#NaNoWriMo2017, Day 8 or Home Improvement Gone Awry

So I decided to be industrious while my husband was out of town and replace the fixtures (except the shower head) in our shower/tub combo. So I buy everything I need (including the correct – allegedly – new knob/faceplate) and have the kids turn the water off yesterday.

Then I disassemble the old one (not paying too much attention because why would I? I’m putting a new one one…) and go to put the new one in place.

And realize that the hole in my tub wall isn’t big enough because apparently the standard size when our house was built and the standard size now isn’t the same.

Sigh.

So I go to Lowe’s and they don’t have it. They send me to a contractor supply store about ten miles away. They don’t have it (and weren’t very friendly, but they don’t deal with the general public very often either) and tell me about a couple other places – all the way across town and I have to pick up kids in thirty minutes so that won’t work. I call one who thinks he has what I need but isn’t sure. The other doesn’t answer. I give up and decide to just clean what I have (because the insides of the handle etc have gotten all gunky over the years). Which means I’m not replacing any of it because if I’m doing it I’m replacing them all not just part.

So I get home and get it reassembled. Have a kid turn the water back on and it runs like a sieve. Turn it off. Decide to disassemble the one in the kids’ bathroom carefully because they’re the same one and I can make sure it’s put back together right.

Realize I’ve broken the inside of the knob. Sigh.

Put the kids’ on in my bathroom. Turn the water on. It’s right. So put the knob back in their bathroom. Turn the water on to fill up my tub to soak some other stuff. Realize the kids’ water had been running too so that knob has an issue now.

Decide crying might be viable as an option. Go vote. Go back to Lowe’s and get two new knobs (one brand name, one after market because that’s what they had) in case I’d also broken the kids’. Go to guitar lessons. Hang out with Tory. Yay!

Get home.

Manage to strip the screw in the knob in the kids’ room. See pic above.

Text the neighbor who works construction. No answer. Call a friend who built his own house. No answer. Call Lowe’s. We’ve got a doohickey. Go to Lowe’s to find out someone had bought the doohickey at one point and returned it and it’s probably not any good. Get home to drill it out following Lowe’s dude’s instructions. Break the smallest bit I could find. Apparently, we’ve broken the other small ones before. Text the neighbor (who had texted me back by then).

Sure. He can help. Today, which was tomorrow at the time. After he gets home from work with his tools.

Commence crying as the viable option.

Sigh.

I texted him back that I can go get drill bits and have a drill, but have no water until I get this done.

He takes pity on me and comes over (in his pajamas, poor guy!) and manages to somehow use a thingie to turn the screw into a flathead and gets it out. The knob isn’t broken, just on upside down. Get it fixed. Thank him profusely. Offer to pay. He refused. Promised him cookies next time we make some. He said he’d originally thought it was just the water to that bathroom that was turned off. Told him I could have lived with that (we haven’t had water in our bathroom sink since August because the one in the kids’ bathroom took three hours to change and we just haven’t had time). He agreed water to the whole house was a different issue.

Put the new knob on in my bathroom. Good thing the kids’ wasn’t broken because the aftermarket one didn’t work. New one was upside down. Turned it over. Put it back on.

Yay! It worked right!

Ugh.

So I didn’t want to write last night, but I did anyway. Not as much as I would have wanted, but more than I would have if I had just curled up with NCIS like I wanted.

Today is chiro and massage and I think lunch with a friend. YAY! Then words later I hope.

Yesterday’s Stats:

In Concert With the King
Yesterday: 2049
Total: 36364

NaNoWriMo 2017
Yesterday: 2049
Total: 27077
Anticipated Completion Date (50K words): November 13 (up a day)

 

One comment

  • Liz Roberts

    I’ve changed out the innards to toilets before, but the first time I had to call my dad to help cause I didn’t remove the bolt on the bottom of the tank that holds the innards in. He had a good chuckle out of that. Since then I’ve had to do it several times. It gets easier each time. I would never attempt to replace a faucet, dishwasher, or anything electrical because I would end up in tears because I know I would make everything worse! Hubby is not handy at all. He even has trouble putting together prefab shelves with instructions. On the other hand, he’s pretty good at sketching up house plans.